Session 27: Tell Me Baby, What's Your Story?
General Summary
Our battle with the gnomes rages on for what feels like forever. When we get one step ahead of them, they turn the tables in an instant until finally, we get the upper hand for good. Interrogating the surviving gnome is a useless endeavor as they don’t speak common and the only lead we have is a map of theirs that marks their village. It’s not much, so we kill the survivor and make our way to civilization to lick our wounds. We sell our squadron of horses to a farmer within the city and leave our current animal companions with a druid. Noah’s dropped off to a local cleric and the rest of us take some time for retail therapy and a spa day.
Unbeknownst to all of us, we’ve all decided to hit up the spa on our own in the hopes of avoiding the rest of the party…only to end up meeting each other there. TT manages to get in free by exploiting the fact that we were attacked by gnomes on the way here, I get in for free by exploiting the lady at the front desk who gives in to my flirtatious ways, and Owkbanok and Amelia simply shoulder the cost of luxury for some much needed relaxation. Already, our relaxation is out the window as we fall into petty squabbling and trying to urge Inami to open up about her past…again. This time, we take our backstory interrogations to a whole new level and lock her in the room; essentially holding her hostage until she finally cracks and tells us more.
She was a part of gang, basically their drug runner. She got tired of being bossed around, took a good portion of the drugs with her and her brother. The gang caught wind of their escape plan and killed her in the ensuing fight. She’s not itching to say more, so we move on to TT’s vague conversation that she’s been hinting at for much of the day. It finally comes out that she wants to attack the elven navy directly. I know from an earlier talk with her in private that there’s much more at stake here than the treasure she’s luring the others with, but I keep that between us. She says two ships will be guarding the main vessel, where a great deal of treasure will be on board. If we can disable the other ships while they’re in the ports, their people will have no choice but to cram themselves on the main vessel.
The lack of space will make sleeping and such uncomfortable and potentially leave them all too weak to defend themselves when we do attack. It’s something we need to discuss with the captain and rest of our crew, so come morning, we gather all of our companions and continue our journey home. A few days later, we reach the ship and to our surprise, it’s still there. We play catch up with the crew, terrorizing everyone who’s long overdue for it and explaining the journey to the captain and officers. With Noah a part of our crew, Owkbanok kicks Nathan out of his room, so I let him set up in my room instead. For some reason, we decide this is now the perfect time to get the entire party together to harass this nerd and TT jokingly activates her ghost-sight gloves…only to immediately see that Nathan is surrounded by plenty of spirits.
This sends panic through us all and as we try and question him, he goes to leave. Jokes on him though because we lock him in the room with us because forget decent social skills when you can just hold people hostage, right? With no other choice, he explains that the ghosts have always been with him. His old home was haunted and he thought that by leaving, he’d be free if his supernatural problem, but the ghosts followed him. He assures us the ghosts won’t cause trouble, but we detect that lie and demand the truth. He says the first ship he was on ended up sinking and the souls of that crew are among the twenty-something spirits that follow him everywhere. Not wanting to lose him as a valuable crew member, we tell Julius to do some research into this, but to keep his mouth shut and not tell the other officers about it.
He’s reluctant, but ultimately agrees. Over dinner, TT explains her plan to the commanding officers. The elven colonies are rich in money and valuables, putting their taxes in banks that serve the elven archipelago which is where the most important people in their society reside. The trip between their mainland the archipelago is three months long each way. We need to hit their ships in the waters between these lands. They only make this trip twice a year and can’t afford to not do this trip or their entire economy is on pause. Serenity asks how she has all this information, so TT says she used to “work” for one of the captains. She then asks what the best ports to hit the defense ships is.
They make five stops on the trip total, three near the mainland which is where we’re gonna wanna hit them. The crew’s worried about this being a suicide mission and having the elven nation at our throats, but I mention that if we do this quietly; no one will have to know. We’ll intercept the ship’s manifest to know exactly what they’re carrying. After the mission concludes, we’ll hit a smaller, but all profit treasure TT knows of to make up for whatever goes wrong here. There’s whispers against this, but me and Owkbanok are quick to shoot them all down because these people haven’t done nearly as much for this ship as the main party has; which puts them all on hush mode.
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